


He Forgot To Mention Her

by Jenni_Snake



Series: Imagine Sisyphus Happy [5]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Divorce, Established Relationship, Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-20
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-27 04:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/974080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenni_Snake/pseuds/Jenni_Snake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermann has kept a secret from Newt. But it's not a secret. Not... really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of a flashback to a scene that wasn't relevant before, but is a bit of a teaser for an upcoming section. (If I don't get it posted now, I don't know when I ever will!)

Telling him about Vanessa had been easy.

"Who's Vanessa?"

Well, relatively easy. Hermann had jumped at Newton reading the holoscreen over his shoulder. He rolled his eyes, but felt his heart pounding quickly.

“She’s a friend. Colleague. A colleague and friend. From Cambridge.”

Newton made a noise of skepticism as he pulled at his plastic gloves.

“So,” he asked, squinting at the screen, “why is she calling you ‘sweetie’?”

Hermann shut off the computer and sighed.

“It's not what you think.”

“Um... okay…” Newton said, drawing out his words. “What do I think?”

Hermann didn’t expect the question, didn’t know what to do with it. His eyes darted around the room, looked at the deep-blue stain of dried blood on the shoulder of the lab coat Newton wore for messy dissections, the lace on his boot that had come undone, the leather bracelets on his left wrist that made two dark lines between the blue gloves and his kalidescopic tattoos - looked at everything except his eyes.

“It - it wasn’t - not an affair,” he stammered in consternation, eyes going over and over the Japanese characters on an empty cardboard box that sat in a corner, not knowing what it meant, but desperate for the distraction.

"No, not - not anything so... adulterous - at least, well... at... Not as…”

Observing him, Newton waited, eyebrows raised. Hermann, rarely at a loss for words, seemed to be unable to find them at the moment.

“She and I - we’re - she’s - it was… we were young, stupid…”

Aware that he was stuttering and incoherent, he steadied himself and started again. More simply. More directly.

“She’s my wife.”

He didn’t think Newton’s eyebrows could rise any higher, yet they did. Hermann felt a cold sweat flash over his skin. It was easier to react to Newton’s jabbering, but he wasn’t saying a word, and Hermann was left on his own.

“So, I know how that sounds,” he continued, watching Newton intently for his reaction, “but we’re - separated. Long term. Indefinitely. Well, definitely. For good. Yet, she is still my wife. I - I - I don’t…”

Hermann took off his glasses and let them drop around his neck. His mouth moved, but he wasn’t making any words; he wasn’t used to having to explain himself. He swallowed.

“We just never got divorced.”

And then, as if Hermann wasn’t even there, as if he was staring right through him at the Shatterdome wall, as if he had had a thought that popped into his mind and puzzled him, Newton knitted his eyebrows, scratched his jaw with his thumb, chewed at the corner of his lip, and then turned on his heel and went back to work. A confused minute later, Hermann went back to what he had been doing, wondering if he had made up the last five minutes in his own mind.

Days later, it was as if Newton had forgotten the conversation entirely, but Hermann still felt like he was walking on eggshells. Newton’s lack of reaction was like a newly formed scab that he couldn’t not pick.

“We’re no longer, we’re not… involved. Vanessa and I,” Hermann blurted out while Newton was brushing his teeth.

“Yeah I know,” Newton muttered through a mouthful of foam, “you’ve said. I believe you.”

But Hermann couldn't shake the feeling that not everything was quite right. Of course, he reminded himself, there was a war going on against inexplicable monsters, the entire world was on rationing, every few months a new city was destroyed, and anything nowadays was only ever relatively easy. So living with this was, in the grand scheme of things, relatively easy.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I don't even want to look and see how long it's been since I updated this (still one more chapter to go!), so I will also now give myself a deadline - the last chapter will be up in a month!_

The restaurant’s exterior looked as though the drab side street had accidentally sprung up around a cozy Paris shopfront, all green-painted wooden window frames and heavy fabric awnings. For a moment, Hermann fooled himself into thinking that he was somewhere else. The humidity brought him back to Tokyo full force, and he pulled at his shirt collar wondering how all the people passing by on their way to the metro managed to wear suits in this weather. He sidled up to a tall potted plant trying to look unperturbed by the heat, brushed an invisible piece of lint from his lapel, and dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief that he folded neatly back into his pocket. He tried not to touch his hair, worried it would stick to his forehead, and clasped his hands together over his cane to force himself to stop.

In his fussing, he missed Vanessa’s approach. It wasn’t until she took him by the elbow and kissed him on the cheek that he even noticed she was there. He felt dumbstruck as always, and held on just slightly too long when she squeezed his hand, staring at her. On their own, her dark rimmed glasses, the start of frizz in the curls of her jet black hair brought on by the humidity, and her large eyes set just too far apart would have looked awkward on anyone else. Although her cheeks sloped gracefully from her dark eyes to her perfect chin, her lips were too large only in the middle, and one eyebrow was ever so slightly arched, giving her a perpetual air of sarcasm. And as mature as her appearance was, the sprinkle of freckles over the bridge of her nose made her look like a pouting child when she frowned. But her entire being conveyed the sense that if any of it didn’t suit you, that was your own problem, and when she smiled, you wish you had thought none of it, and that she would stay and talk to you a moment more. Her allure was indefinable but unmistakable.

“You’re alone,” she noted before Hermann could compose a thought.

“Yes,” he said dreamily, caught up in the musicality of her voice, then shook himself back to reality. “Yes! Newton, of course. Well, he’s been travelling, what, four months now? Since the end of April.”

“I’m sorry to hear."

“It’s fine.”

“You’re not lonely? I know you, Hermann, you get lonely.”

He smiled as she fretted over him.

“I’m fine. And, well, now you’re here.”

They ushered themselves into the restaurant and the illusion of Paris faded away with the wood-panelled walls, the booths separated by rice-paper window lattices, and tabletops that smelled strongly of bleach. They were seated by a young man who was overly friendly but not exceptionally attentive, and who often disappeared into the unseen places of the empty restaurant, leaving them alone.

Alone. Lonely. Vanessa’s words rang through Hermann’s ears again and his mood shifted. It hadn’t even been the time that Newton had been gone. There was something lonely about the time they spent together, even though they had been living together more than three years, that seemed incomplete. It wasn’t something he could put his finger on, but sometimes it felt as if Newton weren’t completely there, regardless of how close they were.

“I see you’re alone, too,” he needled Vanessa. She raised her eyebrows at him.

“Hermann, I’m at a conference.”

“Alone…”

“Jesus, Hermann,” she rolled her eyes and sighed. “Yes, I’m alone. On a break.”

He raised his eyebrows, tilting his chin up in triumph.

“It’s nothing to be smug about. Nerita and I have been on and off before.”

“But you say you’re off, again?”

“Is it any of your business?”

He shrugged, playing with the stem of his wine glass, not really knowing why he was trying to get a rise out of her, but loving every moment of it.

At that moment they were interrupted by the waiter, and placed their order without high hopes that what would arrive at their table would be anything like what was described on the menu. After eleven years of global rationing, it was accepted that whatever turned up was the best that the chef had to offer under the circumstances. The world had been dulled by useless hope in most things, but still, for some reason, kept trying.

With that realization, and with the mood now tense, Vanessa let slip the other reason she had gone out of her way to find Hermann.

“We need to get divorced.”

It was a conversation they had had before, so he was only slightly taken aback.

“I suppose we do. Though we never seem to make it happen.”

“We’re making it happen. I have the documents for you to sign, and I’ll take them back home.”

Logically, Hermann knew it was what they needed to do, so he had trouble giving a name to the feelings it raised in his chest. Only Vanessa didn’t give him time to think about it.

“So,” she said quickly switching topics, “tell me more about Newton - you barely mention him in your e-mails except when I ask about him. From what I know about your assignments, he must be brilliant.”

“Have I ever settled for anyone less than brilliant?” he shrugged.

“That’s why you left me, I suppose.”

“Vanessa - what?” he was dumbfounded. “That’s not what I meant. Of course you’re brilliant. You know that.”

It was her turn to shrug.

“Is that why you kept my name? You didn't feel you were good enough?” he ventured. She shot him a look.

“What? No! Don’t be foolish! I kept your name because there are still places denied me because of my sex and my skin. Even once I proved myself, I had to redouble efforts to not be dismissed. A fault in my logic wasn't a mere matter of correction but called into question my very worth as an academic. You should know, it was the same thing you did all the time.”

The revelation shocked and hurt Hermann, but he only showed indignance.

“I think not! You’re not remembering correctly...”

“Of course, it would be me, wouldn't it? You probably didn’t even know you were doing it, did you?”

“Likely because I wasn’t.”

“No? Every time I started talking about my work, you would take over telling me about the latest developments in my own field, as if you knew more from casual reading than I did from years of study; suggesting solutions to ideas that I’d already considered and dismissed, then insisting on them as if I had no idea what I was talking about. Your arrogance made me feel like a naive undergraduate.”

He was silent for a moment, looked away, then looked her in the eyes.

“I’m sorry, I never realised.”

She wasn’t quite prepared to fully accept his apology, and still fumed.

“You didn’t think that had something to do with why we were married for ten months and separated for ten years?”

He floundered and the words tumbled thoughtlessly out of his mouth.

“You have to admit that seems rather mathematically significant…”

With her arms crossed, she glowered as he sipped his water to relieve the sudden dryness in his throat. Slowly, her frown turned into a smile, and she let out a too-loud laugh and echoed around the sparsely-patroned restaurant, then threw a hand over her mouth, embarrassed. He had forgotten how she had always laughed when he looked guilty, his features, as disproportionate but, she insisted, as beautiful as her own. She would even sometimes get mad at him for his eyes going wide and doe-like, his mouth downturned. But the moment she started to laugh her annoyance into the air, it made him smile.

Their food arrived before they could regain themselves, and merely offer an accented arigato for what was a pair of uninspiring plates that were at least served hot. They splurged and ordered a bottle of red wine that stuck to their teeth but lightened their mood, and helped the conversation flow smoothly. Hermann restrained himself from commenting as Vanessa detailed the paper she was in town to present, and found to his surprise that he learned more about her study of computational linguistics in mere minutes than he ever had before when he interjected. As she leaned in closer with enthusiasm, he did the same. It struck him for the first time that Newton had never spoken to him much about his own work, except insofar as their fields overlapped, and he realized that he often did the same thing that Vanessa had just accused him of. She put a hand across the table over his.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Hmm? Sorry, I was just thinking about Newton.”

“You must miss him.”

A litany of confused expressions played over his face, and he took a breath, then another, but couldn’t find the words to put in front of them.

“I do miss him,” he said finally. “I really do. It’s just that… it’s difficult sometimes.”

“Relationships are a _lot_ of work.”

He turned his hand over in hers. Their plates had been long cleared away, and they were on their second bottle of wine.

“I know, I know, but certainly some things should be easy.” He avoided her eyes when he said it.

“Relationships are a lot of work,” she repeated with a smile.

“Was ours?” he asked.

She laughed again, loudly.

“It was certainly difficult trying not to murder you some days! But,” she said with a coy look, “some things were very easy. Maybe too easy.”

“Falling into bed together…” he said, something between a question and a fond reminiscence. She looked at him directly, her dark eyes filled with light and life.

They left the dim surroundings for the orange-lit streets, still warm even after the disappearance of the sun, and walked hand-in-hand. Vanessa carried her shoes, playing hopscotch over rocks and garbage on the pavement. They behaved for all the world like they were on their first date instead of their last. He walked her to the door of her hotel room.

“Under other circumstances, this would have been a lovely evening,” he said when she led him to the desk and handed him a pen. He hung his cane off the back of the chair and unfolded his glasses from his pocket to read the details of the divorce papers.

“It was still a lovely evening,” she said, pointing to the first X that required his signature.

He stared down at it, eyes glancing over the words, pretending to have any reason not to know what the legalese actually meant. Her own signature fell in a thousand places, neat and precise. The pen felt heavy and he dropped it, leaning against the desk, overcome with fatigue and with the wine. She laid a hand on his back, let it linger a long moment, let it slip to his waist. He turned to her, eyes half closed, and they leaned in close together.

“Let's not get divorced,” Hermann said, letting his fingers fondle the kinks in her hair. “Not until the morning…”

She agreed with a kiss, neither of them able to taste the wine on each other. She slipped the jacket off his shoulders, then reached around to undo her own dress as he undid his shirt buttons with ease. The rustle of fabric stopped as their breathing quickened, until they were naked and locked in another kiss, Hermann pulling himself backwards up the bed as Vanessa hovered over him patiently. When he was where he needed to be, she dragged her breasts up along his thighs, over his hips, feeling his erection growing as she passed over it with her belly, and grabbed him in another full, wet kiss.

When she broke it, she moved back down him, carefully avoiding touching him this time, and popped her lips over the end of his cock for just a quick kiss before joining their lips together again so he could cup and squeeze her breasts. She titled her hips back and forth rubbing against him lightly, letting her wetness slide up his length then teasing the tip again with her clitoris. He moaned, then she echoed him as he rolled the end of her pert nipples between his fingers and thumbs.

Finally, when neither of them could take any more, she slid herself around him biting her bottom lip as she engulfed him bit by bit, letting out a sigh when they couldn’t get any closer. For a moment she rocked her hips back and forth quickly, turning his breath and hers into panting, her eyes closed but rolling back in her head, then stopped.

The pale white of his hands, red around the knuckles and showing every line, showing more than his age, contrasted against the deep brown of her skin, lightly scarred from growth marks around her hips and at her breasts. He squeezed gently at her waist.

“This is so easy,” he said with an appreciative smile, rubbing his palms over her thighs and her backside.

Vanessa didn’t answer except to wriggle her hips. He moaned and whined, and she laughed.

“Admit it,” he said, “we were good together.” He stared longingly into her eyes.

“You mean we're good in bed together,” she said, sitting up, crossing her arms across her chest. Even naked, even with him still inside her, her stern look managed to convey the gravity of the situation, and Hermann had the decency to blush.

The kiss that he whimpered for she took as forgiveness, and joined him again, moving around him slowly, back and forth. She sped up as they gasped for air, then slowed down again, evoking moan followed on by moan out of his throat, feeling the heat rush through each other with every newly intensified sound.

Despite a connection of a mere few inches of flesh, he knew why people said they were inside one another, as he felt as though every part of his body was inside her skin. He gathered all the strength he could and bucked into her lightly, and she smiled, placing a hand on his hip to let him know he didn’t have to, not having to say how much it might cost him the next day.

They knew each other well, and Hermann gave a whimper just before he came, then let her do the same, balanced on one hand, the other getting her off. Vanessa jerked involuntarily as she came, squeezing around him, and jerking again, the tingling travelling all through her body. She fell down next to him, and they let their arms drop around each other listlessly.

“I’d forgotten how good this could feel,” Vanessa gushed quietly.

“I'm hopelessly in love with you,” Hermann responded, drunk off their wine and their sex.

“You say that every time.”

“It's true.”

They spent the night asleep in their own sweat but cooled under the air conditioner. Hermann signed the papers when they got up early, and made an excuse not to stay for breakfast. To stretch his legs, he walked part way back to the Shatterdome. When his hips stopped hurting, his knees started, and he hailed a cab the rest of the way, watching the pink sun come out from behind the clouds.

***

Vanessa’s next phone call couldn’t have come at a more frustrating time. He was chilled to the bone by Hong Kong’s late-January humidity, though everyone else seemed to eye him as if he were insane for sporting a parka in the mild conditions. Her warm voice helped him relax, making him forget temporarily about the upheaval around him. It didn’t last for long as she announced the reason for her call.

“Pregnant?” he echoed, dumbfounded. It was a long moment before he could recompose himself, and offered what he could.

“I mean, if you need help to… you know, it was partly my fault, my mistake, I should have been more careful, more prepared…”

“That’s not what I’m calling for,” her tone changed icy for a moment, “that would be too late anyway… for a mathematician you have a nasty problem with simple computation.”

He did the reckoning in his head and realized she was right.

“Then what…” he breathed.

Her warmth returned.

“Nerita and I were back together just before I found out, and we’ve decided to make it work. It’s what we both want. And we want you to be involved… if you’d like. And Newton, of course! Both of you. We do hope you would like to…”

He couldn’t remember exactly what words he’d said, just that the conversation had ended with her happy, and him still stunned. He stared at the phone, mind blank, ears ringing in the silence, wondering exactly how and when he was going to let Newton know.


End file.
